Cargo holds of pickup trucks, minivans and other vehicles usually have flat, undivided areas that are typically much larger than the bottom areas of the articles that the cargo holds receive. Vehicles often experience forward, backward or side-to-side acceleration during travel. When this happens, the article(s) placed in the cargo hold (such as a trunk or truck bed) will have a tendency to slide. If the acceleration is strong enough, the article may impact the side of the cargo hold, may tip over, or may hit other articles in the cargo hold, all possibly causing damage to the article, to other articles or to the vehicle.
To mitigate this damage, cargo organizers have been designed that restrain the article(s) from sliding. One such cargo organizer is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 9,248,783 B2, assigned to the Applicant hereof. This cargo organizer has a base and two upstanding walls formed at right angles to each other and to the base, forming a three-sided corner. Four such cargo organizers are used to nest the article or articles to be restrained. The bottom surface of the base has an enhanced coefficient of friction and surface area contact with the cargo hold substrate, both of which greatly enhance the resistance to sliding forces. The cargo organizer also enhances the resistance to forces tending to tip over the restrained article.
U.S. Pat. No. 9,067,521 B1, assigned to the Applicant hereof, discloses a cargo organizer for larger, heavier articles, in which four corner units are assembled together using boards into a cargo containment system. The entire disclosure and drawings of the last mentioned patent (hereinafter, the “'521 Patent”) are fully incorporated by reference herein. The Applicant has now invented improvements to this cargo organizer that reduce its “footprint”, make it more versatile, and enhance its ability to be assembled by hand into a multiple-organizer cargo containment system.